


all will fall still; all lapse

by CallicoKitten



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French, Dublin Murders (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Murder, Mental Instability, Multi, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 5,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22655605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: three years after katy devlin's murder, another crime knocks something lose for Cassie, Sam and Rob
Relationships: Cassie Maddox/Sam O'Neill/Rob Ryan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so i started writing this after i watched the show and found it on my phone a few days ago. fyi, i haven't read the book(s) so this is all show canon - i.e. the events of the likeness took place like they did in the show - and idk, it might be out of character
> 
> i'll do my best to finish this 
> 
> title (and excerpts) from the erl king by angela carter

_a young girl would go into the woods as trustingly as Red Riding Hood_

_-_

**Dublin, 2009**

She hears about the case over the radio, stuck in traffic, fingers drumming impatiently against the wheel. It makes her think of Rob because all murders make her think of Rob. Make her think of the way they’d sit together quietly, listening, studying, each caught up in the stark horror of it all for a few moments before they’d tuck it away. He’d say something stark and cutting; she’d roll her eyes; her smile would be quick and smooth.

 _Freak,_ she’d say and it’d be equal parts fond and grateful.

Then they’d get to work.

But not this one, she thinks. No, not this one. She’d let him talk her into Katy but if it had been this one she would have been firmer. Would have _had_ to be firmer. And she still thinks of it sometimes, of how things would have gone if she had managed to talk him out of it, whether their house of cards would have so thoroughly collapsed, whether they’d still be together, one and the same, smirking and snarking and occasionally solving crimes.

Whether there would be a ring on her finger.

-

The case is assigned to Sam because of course it is and Cassie can still picture the expression O’Kelly must have been wearing as he did so. The way he’d say, low and angry and just edging on desperate, _Don’t fuck this up you two. I can’t be dealing with two monumental fucks ups in as many years._

“We don’t have to – ” Sam starts when he gets in. It’s late. His hair is rumpled, his shirt too. He drops beside her on the couch, boneless. “I know it’s – ”

“No.” Cassie sets down her mug. The tea has long gone cold anyway. “It’s okay. I want to.”

The words are wrong, out of her mouth before she can think them through. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, sets a hand on his shoulder. Feels his warmth. The soft fabric of his shirt. The way he leans into it. “I mean, if you want to.”

She can see it in his eyes that he wants to say no because Sam is a good man, because he’s has never wanted anything more than to keep her safe, because they’re both still haunted by Rob – by Adam _fucking_ Ryan and if she lets it; if _he_ lets it, they may just shatter.

But instead he sits forwards, presses a kiss to her forehead. “I won’t lie. If you’ve any insight, we’d be grateful.”

-

The facts are these:

Three children, two girls and a boy wandered into the woods in Glencullen and never came back out. Their bikes were found, the younger girls rucksack, spattered with blood but not enough to tell them a story. The kind of bleed that could have come from a nosebleed as easy as a fight, a crime.

There are no leads. No bodies either, as of yet.

And there is no Adam. No small child found alone, frozen. Caught in the grips of some unknowable terror. Thrust back into the world unready and unwilling.

 _We always think that the ones who got away are the lucky ones,_ Rob says, a hundred years ago. His voice as damp as his eyes. And Cassie remembers thinking, _no. No, no, no. You do not get to do this to me._ Remembers anger just as sharp as the pity welling up in her throat, one hand unconsciously across her stomach.

_But what if the killed are the lucky ones?_


	2. Chapter 2

_The woods enclose. You step between the first trees and then you are no longer in the open air; the wood swallows you up._

_-_

He runs into Rob Ryan – quite literally – on day eight of the investigation at the station. He’s going up as Rob’s coming down and neither of them are really looking where they’re going; Sam caught up in their dwindling list of potential suspects, in the straws they’ll soon be grasping at, Rob caught up in whatever Rob’s caught up in these days.

“Fuck,” Sam says, as his files go sprawling down the steps.

Rob’s smile is absent, doesn’t meet his eyes. Doesn’t often these days, not that Sam sees him often. He might be a floater but the powers that be generally try to keep him out of Dublin. He bends to help Sam gather up the files.

“You’ve got the kid’s case,” he says, peering at one in hands. “Shit, Sam. Condolences.”

Sam’s too tired to muster up a smile. “Yeah, well. We’ve no bodies yet so, you know.” The words are hollow, forced. No one believes those kids are coming back alive. Not even the parents.

“Yeah,” Rob says, bends to retrieve another of Sam’s files. “Yeah,” he says, softer this time as he studies it.

Sam’s too tired for this. Too tired to remind Rob that he doesn’t work Murder anymore, that this is the last fucking case he should be involved in, that even this brief interaction could turn toxic. “Rob,” he prompts.

Rob hands over the file and stands. Something different in his eyes. Something that has Sam frowning, “Alright?”

Rob smiles again. Just as empty. Just as hollow. “Grand.”

-

“Go home,” O’Kelly tells him, mouth set and grim. “You and Quigley both. There’s fuck all to be achieved by chasing our tails on too little sleep.” Sam thinks to argue but his thoughts are too muddled to form anything even bordering on coherent and Quigley is definitely asleep.

On his way out he runs into Mackey, looking less fierce than usual, more annoyed. “Oi, O’Neill. You seen Ryan?”

“They got him working for you now?”

Mackey grins. “Don’t worry yourself, O’Neill. He’s still thoroughly desk-bound and apparently, MIA, so if you’ll excuse me.” He stalks off.

Sam sits in the car a moment before starting the engine. _Saw Rob today,_ he wants to text Cassie but it’s 1am, she shouldn’t still be awake even if he knows she is. She always is. Waits up for him when she’s not got an early start the next day, woollen blanket about her shoulder, mug of tea, or whiskey clutched between her hands.

He puts his phone down but then it starts ringing.

Cassie.

“Have you left yet?” she asks and he knows immediately that she’s unsettled, that something has unsettled her.

“What’s wrong?”

Sam can picture her chewing on her bottom lip. Weighing up whether to tell him or not. She’s still like that, sometimes. He still has to tease things out of her, reassure her it’s okay, she’s not a burden, never could be a burden.

“Mackey called,” she says, eventually. “I think to fuck me off or have a laugh, or something.” She sniffs. Something on the other end of the line rustles. “He wanted to know if I’d heard from Rob. Said he’s missing.”


	3. Chapter 3

_Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again_

_-_

Sam isn’t sure what makes him go there.

He’s halfway home before he phones Cassie and finds her still waiting, damp in her voice.

“D’you think someone should check?” He asks and his voice sounds uncertain even to his own ears. “You know, Rob. What with the kid’s and all – ”

And he realises he wants Cassie to laugh at him. To tell him he’s an idiot, that Rob’s probably just stepped out with some bird or fucked off chasing a lead. To tell him he’s being over dramatic, to say _Christ, Sam, don’t be morbid_. To tell him it’s not his job. Rob’s a big boy. He can take care of himself and even if he can’t, even if he’s _proved_ he can’t, there are other officers better placed than Sam.

But she doesn’t.

She’s quiet for a while and then she sighs, says, “I’ve been thinking that too.”

He hangs up before she can say, _I’ll go with you_ and later he’ll regret it but for now, he turns the car around. Heads towards Knocknaree.

-

Rob’s car is on the lay by, his phone on the front passenger seat. It’s too dark for Sam to make out his trail over the low metal barrier and into the woods but something in his chest is tugging him like a magnet, drawing him forwards through the trees pressed close together.

As he goes, he calls Rob’s name. The only answer he gets is in the whistle of the wind through the leaves, the low, sinister groan of the branches and maybe there are other sounds that he doesn’t let himself hear, doesn’t let himself process – sounds like the echo of a different name from years ago, like the high, thin crying of a child, like laughter, laughter that turns Sam’s blood to ice and makes his chest clench tight – but he keeps going, stumbles on until he spots him.

Spots Rob on his knees in the dirt and breaks into a run.

The earth in front of him has been disturbed, torn up into a deep pit and there are bones glinting blue-white in the moonlight that Sam doesn’t need to look at because he knows – he _knows_ – and it must have taken Rob ages to dig that far, that deep without a spade.

He’s sitting on his knees, his eyes fixed and unseeing, his mouth slack. From the police reports, Sam remembers they found him like this the first time. Catatonic. Unresponsive.

His hands are limp in his lap. Beneath the dirt, Sam bets they’re broken, bloody.

“Rob,” he says, his voice thin. His stomach is churning, his head is spinning. “Rob,” he tries again but there’s nothing. No response so he tries, “ _Adam?_ ” and the name does not fit neatly in his mouth, flows awkwardly, feels wrong.

But Rob flinches. His whole body jerks, shudders but his gaze slides quickly back to the bones. Vacant. Unseeing.

Sam closes his eyes briefly.

Cassie would know what to do.


	4. Chapter 4

_then she will open all the cages and let the birds free_

_-_

When he first told her, Cassie remembers wanting to laugh.

Not because it was funny. Not because she thought he was joking because by then she knew how to tell when he was being serious. She knew when to pay attention to the look in his eyes, the way he held himself, the tone of his voice beneath it all. She knew when to ignore what he was saying and when to pay attention. But she _wanted_ it to be a joke.

And later, she told herself it was out of selfishness not pity. Selfishness because Rob being little Adam was complicated. Because it put them both at risk. Because if he was found out – if anyone looked twice and connected the dots – all the work they’d be doing would be for nothing. But she’d never quite been able to shake the image of Adam in the police file, eyes wide and vacant, yellow t-shirt shredded, never quite been able to look at Rob without seeing that little boy in the back of her mind.

Sam phones from the side of a road and Cassie is bracing herself for something she’s always felt was coming. “We found them,” he says and he sounds tired, so tired. “Rob found them. Jamie and Peter.”

She lets out a breath. It feels like relief.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the amount of police dramas i watch, i really don't have a clear idea about proper procedure or anything

_it is easy to lose yourself in these woods_

-

Rob is in the backseat of Sam’s car. When Sam led him there, he sat him down but at some point, he must have lain down, curled himself into himself, arms up, across his face.

“We’ve taken swabs and samples from his hands,” Miller says, her eyes on the car, not Sam. She was with them when they found Katy, he knows. With Rob when they found her murderer. “He says he doesn’t need medical attention. O’Kelley wants him taken back to the station.”

“He spoke to you?”

Miller twists her mouth. “Not as such. He shook his head when I asked. He seemed lucid, if upset.” She runs a hand through her hair. Sam can see what she’s thinking plain as day on her face: _this doesn’t look good_ and Sam knows. Sam knows. Can almost see the headlines now. Can hear the angry mob outside the Castle, the chants that call for Rob’s arrest, Jamie’s mother at the fore shouting how she knew it all along.

He closes his eyes. “I’ll get him back to the station.”

The thing is, he’s never once wondered if Rob did it. Never even crossed his mind. Rob was angry, he knew. Could be brittle, caustic. Self-destructive but he’d never – not once – looked at Rob as a danger to anything but himself.

But it’ll be a hell of a thing to explain.

Rob is quiet as he slides into the passenger seat. “I’m to take you in, Rob,” Sam says and he hopes to whoever’s listening that his voice doesn’t shake as much as he thinks it does. “They’ll want to question you.”

Rob says nothing.

Only when they’re about halfway back to the city does he start to shudder. Does his breathing start to tremble.


	6. Chapter 6

_The candle flutters and goes out._

_-_

“I don’t know what set him off,” Sam says, rubbing a hand across his face. “I don’t remember.”

O’Kelly and Mackey are wearing identical expressions of annoyance, both of them with arms folded tightly across their chests. In any other situation, he’d be hiding a smirk behind his hand at their mirrored stances on Cassie’s behalf.

“You were the last to see him before he left,” Mackey says, eyes like cold steel. It’s like he’s accusing Sam of something. Like he thinks Sam did this deliberately. Sent Rob off into a trance of some kind to distract from his own impossible case. “Did he say anything to you?”

_You’ve got the kid’s case._

“Nothing. Nothing important, anyway.”

_Condolences._

“I ran into him on the stairs. I dropped my files, he helped pick them up and then he left.”

“Which files?” Mackey asks.

O’Kelly looks at him sharply. Then he looks at Sam. “Which files, O’Neill?”

Instead of answering, Sam retrieves the files from his desk and brings them over. Mackey snatches them out of his hands. “Something in these set him off.”

O’Kelly snatches them back. “And they’re _my_ cases. Like this is _my_ case, so these’ll be reviewed by _my_ detectives.”

For a moment Sam’s sure Mackey’ll fight but he backs down. Scoffs softly and swans out. As soon as he’s gone, O’Kelly’s shoulders slump.

“What a fucking mess,” he mutters, glowers at Sam like he too thinks this is his fault. “Go home, O’Neill.”

“With all due respect, sir, it’s not like I’ll be getting much sleep.”

O’Kelly makes a face. “Make yourself useful then. Or if all you’ll be doing is standing around vacantly moping, do it somewhere I don’t have to see it.”

-

Rob’s forehead is pressed to the table. His hands atop his head. He breathes slow and deep.

Sam doesn’t know how Cassie got in here but she’s appeared somehow at his elbow. “I phoned his mother,” she says. Her eyes are fixed the same way Rob’s were back in the woods. “I thought – ” she trails off. “Has he said anything?”

“No.” Sam’s voice is all raspy. His throat feels raw. His eyes feel like they’re cemented open. “O’Kelly’s scrambling. Trying to figure out who to send in there with him.”

Cassie is chewing her lip in a way that says she wants to blurt, _I’ll do it_ so Sam puts a hand on her shoulder to hold her steady, to hold her still.

He knows it’s coming though - can taste it, sharp and coppery at the back of his mouth.

In the room before them, Rob sucks in a long, shuddering breath. Lets out what sounds dangerously close to a sob.

“Why now?” Cassie wonders aloud. She puts a hand up on the glass. “Why _now_?”


	7. Chapter 7

_Once I was the perfect child of the meadow of summer, but then the year turned, the light clarified_

_-_

He focuses on his breathing.

_I don’t remember._

Breathes in. Breathes out.

_I don’t – I don’t remember –_

His fingers throb dully from the antiseptic swabs Miller used. She wanted to bandage them. He wanted her to stop touching him.

_I don’t. I don’t. I don’t._

Wanted her to stop looking at him like that.

_I don’t – I promise – I don’t –_

Like he was wounded.

_I **don’t.**_

Like he was lost.

_I’m sorry._

Because the thing is; he feels like he can breathe for the first time since he stepped into those woods as a boy. Because it might be grief that’s tangled in his throat but it’s also relief. It’s shaking off the spectre that’s dogged him all these years, the blood in his shoes, the slow, crawling dread, the vines coiled about his throat, about his wrists, holding him up – they’ve all been cut. He’s crumpled to the floor but he’s free.

He’s free.

And he wants to laugh.

He wants to _laugh._

“Ah, fuck,” someone says. “He’s cracked.”

He didn’t even hear the door open because he’s laughing. He’s laughing so hard.

“Call the medics back. Get O’Kelly down here.”

_I found them. I found them._

There’s a voice from years ago, hands on top of his. They’re small, slight. Trying to pry his fingers apart. They’re damp – his fingers, not the others – or maybe it’s his scalp, maybe he’s dug his nails in too tight.

“Rob,” the voice says. “Rob, come on.” But it can’t be real. Can’t be her.

“I found them, Cass,” he says. “I brought them home.”

“I know,” the voice says. It sounds damp. “I know, Rob. I know.”

There are other hands then. Larger. Rougher. They fold over not-Cassie’s, pull Rob’s hands apart along with hers.

“I brought them home,” he says again. His eyes are squeezed shut. He doesn’t remember doing that.

The smaller hands are on his face now. The bigger ones haven’t let go either.

“I know, Rob,” Cassie says. “I know.”


	8. Chapter 8

_Introspective weather; a sickroom hush._

-

They sleep until just gone three.

It’s been raining all day, rattling off the roof and the windows, blanketing her in a kind of white noise. Beside her, Sam is restless. Tossing and turning, eyelids fluttering. She doesn’t try to hold him still. Doesn’t try to soothe him.

She chases her own phantoms through the woods of Knocknaree – chases a boy in a yellow t-shirt but there’s someone chasing her too. Someone who’s sometimes Daniel March, who’s sometimes Lexie, who’s sometimes Rob.

Her phone keeps buzzing.

Texts from Quinlan, from Mackey. From Rob’s mother.

Adam’s mother.

“They’ve got him sedated,” she tells Sam as he fries eggs. “They’re gonna give it a day or so before they try and question him again.”

Sam has his back to her, head bent over the pan. “’t’was stupid to bring him in in the first place. I dunno what O’Kelly was thinking.”

Cassie thins her lips. She knows exactly what O’Kelly was thinking, what half the country will be thinking when this gets out. Little Adam Ryan went into the woods with his friends one sunny afternoon in 1985 and came out alone. Now, years later, Rob Ryan goes into the woods and brings his friends home, a week or so after three new children vanish under similar circumstances.

 _Why now?_ They’ll think. _How can it not be related?_

Everything Cassie’s learnt since she went back to school is trying to drown out those thoughts, those fears. Words like _dissociation_ and _fugue_ and _post-traumatic stress disorder._ She remembers years ago, when they were still Rob and Cassie, when Rob told her absently he thought his parents were scared of him and laughed.

It makes her skin itch now. His laugh, hollow and brittle. Miles away from the sobbing, desperate laughter rattling off the walls of the interview room.

 _I brought them home,_ he said. _I brought them home._

Sam sets the plate of eggs in front of her and rubs her arm. “We could go visit him if you’d like. I don’t know that it’d be a conflict of interest just yet.”

She should say no but instead she says, “Yes.”

And Sam offers her a small smile. Something like relief in his eyes. He feels responsible. Responsible for this, for Rob. His phone starts buzzing as they pull in to the hospital carpark. O’Kelly. “You go on ahead,” he says and Cassie feels something twinge in her stomach as she crosses the damp tarmac.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i gave up on the chapter quotes bc im lazy
> 
> hope you guys are all keeping safe

His mother is asleep in the chair beside his bed. She did that the first time too. Only that time, she was squeezing his hand so tight he felt his bones grind together.

This time her whole body is turned away from him, arched into the corner of the chair, her face turned away.

When they first let her in – or when he first woke up, she cried. Not like the first time, when her chest was heaving and her face was blotchy and she couldn’t even get the words out. This time it was muted. The corners of her mouth pulling down, breathing slow and steady, “Oh, Adam,” she’d said. “Oh, Adam.”

It’s almost funny to think that he still has no idea what she thinks of him. Whether the distance between them was of his own making or whether she recoiled first. Whether she got the call – and he wonders who called her, whether it was Sam or Quinlan or one of the new fellas he’s never learnt the names of – whether she got the call and closed her eyes tight against a wave of revulsion. Against the idea that he did it. The fear that’s always been there.

She’d taken his hand only once in the night when Rob couldn’t breathe through the tears that just kept coming.

“What happened, Adam?” she had asked, begged and Rob had laughed again.

“I don’t know,” he’d said, honestly. “I don’t know.”

Because that’s just it: he still doesn’t. He doesn’t remember going back to Knocknaree. He doesn’t remember parking his car by the verge, traipsing through the woods. He doesn’t remember digging up their bones. He just remembers the relief crashing over him.

When he feels her eyes on him, he’s sure she’s just another phantom. Cassie Maddox, once upon a time the centre of his universe. Now this silent, judgemental shadow. But when he looks at her and blinks she doesn’t vanish. He tilts his head.

She offers him a smile. Small, fleeting. Not a Cassie smile at all. The kind of smile she’d offer a victim, or a suspect. Someone she couldn’t quite figure out yet. Placating but stretched thin. “It’s alright. You’ve not cracked completely. I’m here, Rob.”

And God, for a moment, it feels like the suns come out at long last, warms him to his core. He wants to bask in it, to close his eyes against it but –

But the time for that is long past.

“If you’re here to interrogate me, you’ll be disappointed. I still don’t remember anything from that night. From either night, in fact.”

Cassie’s face crumples. “Rob, that’s not – ” she starts but then her phone starts ringing. 


	10. Chapter 10

When Sam gets there, there’s already a stark white tent erected out amongst the trees.

“Some kids found him this morning,” the SOCO is saying. “Apparently they were out for an early morning jog but the bottles and drug paraphernalia tell a different story.”

Sam really should be listening. He’s seen dead kids before. One of first jobs involved a dead kid, in fact. He’s seen all sorts. Seen three now, in twenty-four hours and he’s trying to put a finger on exactly why this has gotten under his skin so deep. Why beyond the mess it’s made of everything else.

“Not a mark on him so far.” The SOCO hands him gloves, shoe covers, coveralls. “It’s damn unsettling. No sign of the girls either.”

And the SOCO is young, experienced but young. She doesn’t look disturbed about the dead boy a few feet away from them but she’s watching him with a sort of intensity that makes his skin crawl. It’s not just about the boy for her, like it’s not just about the boy for the uniforms he met on the road, the ones who let him through the cordon. Quinlan, who left a heavy pause as he trailed off after, “It’s just ….” On the phone earlier.

_It’s just…_

“We’ve been wondering if there’s any connection,” the SOCO says, leading him into the tent.

_Too convenient. Eerily similar._

She looks at him, eyes bright behind the mask. “With – you _know_.”

 _Just think of the timing,_ Quinlan had said, voice hushed. _Now, I’m not a superstitious man but –_

“I mean, we haven’t found anything yet. But what are the chances of it not being related?”

_Three little kids go missing in the woods. Barely a week later, Rob Ryan, a former missing child himself, goes into **different** woods and miraculously stumbles upon the bones of his dead friends! Look, Sam, I’m just saying – _

“Stranger things have happened,” Sam says. Sam hopes.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, it's been a while - sorry about that :')
> 
> hope you're all staying safe and doing well

“It’s called a dissociative fugue,” the psychiatrist says. “Once it’s happened to someone once, it’s more likely to happen again but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”

Rob feels like a child again. Small in a hospital bed, a faceless doctor leaning over him, smiling kindly but showing their worry in the deep frown lines in their forehead. _We could try hypnosis or a number of other options but I’m afraid with your history –_

His mother is at the door. Her face pale and drawn, her eyes vacant as she nods. He watches her and thinks, _do you still wish I hadn’t come back sometimes? Do you think it would have been easier? Easier for you, for me, for Da._

_Do you still look at me and wonder if I did it?_

She meets his gaze and looks immediately away, jaw working as she swallows back a shudder, a wince.

_Yes._

_The answer is **yes.**_

And she’d done that before too. Held his hands between hers, turned them over and over and over, looking for some hint of an answer. A fleck of blood. A broken nail. Something that would either condemn or acquit him. Something that would give her the answers she was so desperate for.

 _Maybe I did do it,_ he’d said, at sixteen, fists balled so tightly his blunt nails had left little half-moon impressions in his palms. _Maybe I killed them. Maybe I did it._

And his psychiatrist that year hadn’t flinched like Rob had wanted him too. He hadn’t politely averted his gaze or repressed some shudder of fear, of revulsion or fucking tip-toed around the subject. He’d leant forwards, demanded Rob look him in the eye and said, _No, you didn’t. You might be angry, Rob and impulsive and bitter and deflecting, but you’re not cruel. And if you’re not cruel now, after all you’ve been through, you weren’t cruel then._

At the time, it had been what he needed to hear. Now he knows it for the bullshit he is.

Someone takes his hand and he jumps. “Rob,” Cassie says, gently prompting.

He looks at her. _Case in point,_ he thinks and looks up at the doctor.

It’s funny. When the doctor came in here, he asked for anyone not family to leave so Sam had gone but Cassie had stayed and no one had questioned it. Not even Sam.


	12. Chapter 12

“Are they going to arrest him?” Rob’s mother asks. He’s asleep between them, drugs to help him along. Cassie’s not sure why she’s still here. She probably shouldn’t be. But Sam was her ride and he hasn’t called yet. Anyway, if she went back home, all she’d do is fret.

None of this feels real anymore. Being here right now. Peter and Jamie found.

“Cassie,” Rob’s mum prompts and Cassie blinks, like she’s coming awake from a dream.

“Sorry?”

She looks tired. She’s looked tired since Cassie met her but now she looks exhausted. A bone-deep exhaustion. The kind where you’re just dragging yourself forwards on autopilot, no real sense of anything anymore, just wanting it to stop. “I said; are they going to arrest him?”

Her hand is gripping Rob’s tight on top of the blankets. Cassie can’t fathom what this must be like for her.

“I don’t know,” Cassie answers honestly. “O’Kelly wants to question him but – ” She breaks off, looks at Rob between them. O’Kelly knows he had nothing to do with Jamie and Peter, if he didn’t, if he even caught the smallest whiff of guilt, he never would have let Rob stay on the force.

But these new kids –

And her mouth fills with acid even at the thought of it. The thought of Rob going out there to –

“He didn’t do it,” she hears herself say and she cringes. She’s using the tone she used to use for victims. Family members and partners and friends of the missing, of the recently deceased. Soft and fake and just bordering on patronising.

And she’s half expecting anger, annoyance, defiance but Rob’s mother just keeps holding his hand, looking tired and despairing. “I know,” she says but there’s a _but_ that hangs starkly between them.

_Rob didn’t do this but –_

_Rob doesn’t remember finding Peter and Jamie._

Something feels like it’s about to break, that moment in the case when a witness reveals something important, some small scrap of evidence that she’s overlooked that makes things slot into place but then Cassie’s mobile starts ringing and she has to excuse herself.

“We found one of the kids,” Sam says. It’s raining wherever he is. She can hear it falling in heavy drops against the material of the crime scene tent.

Cassie closes her eyes. “Just one?”

“Just one.” Sam’s quiet for a few moments before lets out this soft noise of frustration. “It’s fucked up, Cass. It feels like this is some sort of sick bargain. Two new kids for two dead ones, you know?”

“I know,” Cassie says. “I know.”


	13. Chapter 13

Cassie gets a cab to the Castle to meet him but she’s not the only one waiting in the car park when he gets back. A small crowd of protestors have gathered and he knows without looking that Jamie’s mother is at the forefront.

He doesn’t know who got the job of telling her her daughter had been found and he can’t begrudge her for being angry. He would be too if his child had been snatched away when someone else’s wandered back. _Murderer!_ She’s shouting. _They protected a murderer and now he’s struck again!_

Cassie is watching, tight-lipped, expression shuttered. He hands her the car keys; promises he won’t be long.

-

O’Kelly is grim-faced when Sam hands him the report. Quinlan has gone to inform the family. Preliminary reports suggest the boy was asphyxiated, maybe poisoned. There’s not a mark on him. No bruises, no cuts, no visible injuries at all.

O’Kelly sets down the report.

“Hospital says Ryan’s being released tomorrow. I want him brought in for questioning. Then we’ll move him to protective custody.” He sits down behind his desk with a heavy sigh. “Unless of course it turns out he really did it. Then we’ll move him into regular custody.” He passes a hand across his eyes.

“Sir, Rob didn’t do this.” Sam says because it seems important. Because it’s the only thing he has right now.

O’Kelly looks at him, tired and long-suffering. “I know that. Mackey told me he was working on the 14th. There’s two hours or so unaccounted for but it’d be a tall order for him to drive up to Glencullen, murder 3 kids, stash their bodies and be back with no one the wiser.”

 _He might have killed them and come back later to stash the bodies,_ Sam’s brain supplies. _Or stashed them alive. Gone back later to –_

“Christ, O’Neill, go home. I want you at the hospital bright and early to bring Ryan in. Make sure he doesn’t wander off into the woods again. Lord only knows what he’d unearth this time.”

Sam half wants to protest. It’s a conflict of interest. He’d rather focus on the real case – _his_ case. Any old uniform could transport Rob but he knows deep down it’s not true. That O’Kelly’s not so much assigning this task to him but to him and _Cassie._ Because even after everything, it’s hard to imagine Rob saying no to her.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry this has taken so long - real life got crazy busy for a while there but im back now!

It rains again that night. Hard, heavy drops.

She lies awake, Sam behind her, close but not touching. Neither of them will get any sleep tonight. They both know that.

“Do you think they’re linked?” Sam asks. He’s whispering though there’s no one to disturb. “Adam, Peter, Jamie – the new kids?”

Cassie’s chewing the inside of her cheek. “Katy wasn’t. Had us looking in the wrong direction all along.”

 _Us._ Her. Rob.

“Could have just been the similarities that set him off.”

Same lets out a shaky breath. “So there are two sick fucks out there who like killin’ kids. Great.”

“If there are only two, we’re doing okay,” she says. But she knows what he means. It’d be easier if it was the same perpetrator, easier to tie everything together neatly, to solve two cases at once. To find out what happened in ’85. 

Christ. She sounds like Rob.

“Did the autopsy results come back?”

Sam shifts. “Nothing on Jamie. Peter has a head wound but they’re not 100% whether that was pre- or post-mortem.”

So, nothing. Rob digs them up with his bare hands and they’re still left with nothing.

“Do you think it’s just coincidence, then?” Sam asks. “Three kids. The woods. Just happenstance?”

“Why not?” After all kids are killed every day. The woods are a convenient place to stalk your prey, to dump a body. She closes her eyes. Tastes copper across her tongue.

There’s a reason she left the Gardai. Left murder.

Except she never really left, did she? Just stepped aside. Used Sam as barrier, a conduit. Still involved but at a safe distance. Never getting her hands dirty, never getting too involved.

It sounds like Rob’s voice. Accusing, taunting.


End file.
